Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley (book club reads txt) 📖

>But when Amyas, by special instigation of the evil spirit who haunts successful artists, proceeded further to introduce, heedless of perspective, a rock, on which stood the lively portraiture of Sir Vindex—nose, spectacles, gown, and all; and in his hand a brandished rod, while out of his mouth a label shrieked after the runaways, “You come back!” while a similar label replied from the gallant bark, “Good-bye, master!” the shoving and tittering rose to such a pitch that Cerberus awoke, and demanded sternly what the noise was about. To which, of course, there was no answer.

“You, of course, Leigh! Come up, sir, and show me your exercitation.”

Now of Amyas’s exercitation not a word was written; and, moreover, he was in the very article of putting the last touches to Mr. Brimblecombe’s portrait. Whereon, to the astonishment of all hearers, he made answer—

“All in good time, sir!” and went on drawing.

In good time, sir! Insolent, veni et vapula!”

But Amyas went on drawing.

“Come hither, sirrah, or I’ll flay you alive!”

“Wait a bit!” answered Amyas.

The old gentleman jumped up, ferula in hand, and darted across the school, and saw himself upon the fatal slate.

“Proh flagitium! what have we here, villain?” and clutching at his victim, he raised the cane. Whereupon, with a serene and cheerful countenance, up rose the mighty form of Amyas Leigh, a head and shoulders above his tormentor, and that slate descended on the bald coxcomb of Sir Vindex Brimblecombe, with so shrewd a blow that slate and pate cracked at the same instant, and the poor pedagogue dropped to the floor, and lay for dead.

After which Amyas arose, and walked out of the school, and so quietly home; and having taken counsel with himself, went to his mother, and said, “Please, mother, I’ve broken schoolmaster’s head.”

“Broken his head, thou wicked boy!” shrieked the poor widow; “what didst do that for?”

“I can’t tell,” said Amyas, penitently; “I couldn’t help it. It looked so smooth, and bald, and round, and—you know?”

“I know? Oh, wicked boy! thou hast given place to the devil; and now, perhaps, thou hast killed him.”

“Killed the devil?” asked Amyas, hopefully but doubtfully.

“No, killed the schoolmaster, sirrah! Is he dead?”

“I don’t think he’s dead; his coxcomb sounded too hard for that. But had not I better go and tell Sir Richard?”

The poor mother could hardly help laughing, in spite of her terror, at Amyas’s perfect coolness (which was not in the least meant for insolence), and being at her wits’ end, sent him, as usual, to his godfather.

Amyas rehearsed his story again, with pretty nearly the same exclamations, to which he gave pretty nearly the same answers; and then—“What was he going to do to you, then, sirrah?”

“Flog me, because I could not write my exercise, and so drew a picture of him instead.”

“What! art afraid of being flogged?”

“Not a bit; besides, I’m too much accustomed to it; but I was busy, and he was in such a desperate hurry; and, oh, sir, if you had but seen his bald head, you would have broken it yourself!”

Now Sir Richard had, twenty years ago, in like place, and very much in like manner, broken the head of Vindex Brimblecombe’s father, schoolmaster in his day, and therefore had a precedent to direct him; and he answered—“Amyas, sirrah! those who cannot obey will never be fit to rule. If thou canst not keep discipline now, thou wilt never make a company or a crew keep it when thou art grown. Dost mind that, sirrah?”

“Yes,” said Amyas.

“Then go back to school this moment, sir, and be flogged.”

“Very well,” said Amyas, considering that he had got off very cheaply; while Sir Richard, as soon as he was out of the room, lay back in his chair, and laughed till he cried again.

So Amyas went back, and said that he was come to be flogged; whereon the old schoolmaster, whose pate had been plastered meanwhile, wept tears of joy over the returning prodigal, and then gave him such a switching as he did not forget for eight-and-forty hours.

But that evening Sir Richard sent for old Vindex, who entered, trembling, cap in hand; and having primed him with a cup of sack, said—“Well, Mr. Schoolmaster! My godson has been somewhat too much for you to-day. There are a couple of nobles to pay the doctor.”

“O Sir Richard, gratias tibi et Domino! but the boy hits shrewdly hard. Nevertheless I have repaid him in inverse kind, and set him an imposition, to learn me one of Phaedrus his fables, Sir Richard, if you do not think it too much.”

“Which, then? The one about the man who brought up a lion’s cub, and was eaten by him in play at last?”

“Ah, Sir Richard! you have always a merry wit. But, indeed, the boy is a brave boy, and a quick boy, Sir Richard, but more forgetful than Lethe; and—sapienti loquor—it were well if he were away, for I shall never see him again without my head aching. Moreover, he put my son Jack upon the fire last Wednesday, as you would put a football, though he is a year older, your worship, because, he said, he looked so like a roasting pig, Sir Richard.”

“Alas, poor Jack!”

“And what’s more, your worship, he is pugnax, bellicosus, gladiator, a fire-eater and swashbuckler, beyond all Christian measure; a very sucking Entellus, Sir Richard, and will do to death some of her majesty’s lieges erelong, if he be not wisely curbed. It was but a month agone that he bemoaned himself, I hear, as Alexander did, because there were no more worlds to conquer, saying that it was a pity he was so strong; for, now he had thrashed all the Bideford lads, he had no sport left; and so, as my Jack tells me, last Tuesday week he fell upon a young man of Barnstaple, Sir Richard, a hosier’s man, sir, and plebeius (which I consider unfit for one of his blood), and, moreover, a man full grown, and as big as either of us (Vindex stood five feet four in his high-heeled shoes), and smote him clean over the quay into the mud, because he said that there was a prettier maid in Barnstaple (your worship will forgive my speaking of such toys, to which my fidelity compels me) than ever Bideford could show; and then offered to do the same to any man who dare say that Mistress Rose Salterne, his worship the mayor’s daughter, was not the fairest lass in all Devon.”

“Eh? Say that over again, my good sir,” quoth Sir Richard, who had thus arrived, as we have seen, at the second count of the indictment. “I say, good sir, whence dost thou hear all these pretty stories?”

“My son Jack, Sir Richard, my son Jack, ingenui vultus puer.”

“But not, it seems, ingenui pudoris. Tell thee what, Mr. Schoolmaster, no wonder if thy son gets put on the fire, if thou employ him as a tale-bearer. But that is the way of all pedagogues and their sons, by which they train the lads up eavesdroppers and favor-curriers, and prepare them—sirrah, do you hear?—for a much more lasting and hotter fire than that which has scorched thy son Jack’s nether-tackle. Do you mark me, sir?”

The poor pedagogue, thus cunningly caught in his own trap, stood trembling before his patron, who, as hereditary head of the Bridge Trust, which endowed the school and the rest of the Bideford charities, could, by a turn of his finger, sweep him forth with the besom of destruction; and he gasped with terror as Sir Richard went on—“Therefore, mind you, Sir Schoolmaster, unless you shall promise me never to hint word of what has passed between us two, and that neither you nor yours shall henceforth carry tales of my godson, or speak his name within a day’s march of Mistress Salterne’s, look to it, if I do not—”

What was to be done in default was not spoken; for down went poor old Vindex on his knees:—

“Oh, Sir Richard! Excellentissime, immo praecelsissime Domine et Senator, I promise! O sir, Miles et Eques of the Garter, Bath, and Golden Fleece, consider your dignities, and my old age—and my great family—nine children—oh, Sir Richard, and eight of them girls!—Do eagles war with mice? says the ancient!”

“Thy large family, eh? How old is that fat-witted son of thine?”

“Sixteen, Sir Richard; but that is not his fault, indeed!”

“Nay, I suppose he would be still sucking his thumb if he dared— get up, man—get up and seat yourself.”

“Heaven forbid!” murmured poor Vindex, with deep humility.

“Why is not the rogue at Oxford, with a murrain on him, instead of lurching about here carrying tales and ogling the maidens?”

“I had hoped, Sir Richard—and therefore I said it was not his fault—but there was never a servitorship at Exeter open.”

“Go to, man—go to! I will speak to my brethren of the Trust, and to Oxford he shall go this autumn, or else to Exeter gaol, for a strong rogue, and a masterless man. Do you hear?”

“Hear?—oh, sir, yes! and return thanks. Jack shall go, Sir Richard, doubt it not—I were mad else; and, Sir Richard, may I go too?”

And therewith Vindex vanished, and Sir Richard enjoyed a second mighty laugh, which brought in Lady Grenville, who possibly had overheard the whole; for the first words she said were—

“I think, my sweet life, we had better go up to Burrough.”

So to Burrough they went; and after much talk, and many tears, matters were so concluded that Amyas Leigh found himself riding joyfully towards Plymouth, by the side of Sir Richard, and being handed over to Captain Drake, vanished for three years from the good town of Bideford.

And now he is returned in triumph, and the observed of all observers; and looks round and round, and sees all faces whom he expects, except one; and that the one which he had rather see than his mother’s? He is not quite sure. Shame on himself!

And now the prayers being ended, the rector ascends the pulpit, and begins his sermon on the text:—

“The heaven and the heaven of heavens are the Lord’s; the whole earth hath he given to the children of men;” deducing therefrom craftily, to the exceeding pleasure of his hearers, the iniquity of the Spaniards in dispossessing the Indians, and in arrogating to themselves the sovereignty of the tropic seas; the vanity of the Pope of Rome in pretending to bestow on them the new countries of America; and the justice, valor, and glory of Mr. Drake and his expedition, as testified by God’s miraculous protection of him and his, both in the Straits of Magellan, and in his battle with the Galleon; and last, but not least, upon the rock by Celebes, when the Pelican lay for hours firmly fixed, and was floated off unhurt, as it were by miracle, by a sudden shift of wind.

Ay, smile, reader, if you will; and, perhaps, there was matter for a smile in that honest sermon, interlarded, as it was, with scraps of Greek and Hebrew, which no one understood, but every one expected as their right (for a preacher was nothing then who could not prove himself “a good Latiner”); and graced, moreover, by a somewhat pedantic and lengthy refutation from Scripture of Dan Horace’s cockney horror of the sea—

 

“Illi robur et aes triplex,” etc.

 

and his infidel and ungodly slander against the impias rates, and their crews.

Smile, if you will: but those were days (and there were never less superstitious ones) in which Englishmen believed in the living God, and were not ashamed to acknowledge, as a matter of course, His help and providence, and